Hiragana

Where am I going? I obviously want the GSCE, but practically I want to be able to make a passable effort in Japanese - reading a magazine or watching TV would be cool too.

I began with Hiragana, last week. I used this book (aimed at kids I think!) called "Let's Learn Hiragana", which takes you through how to write, and then tests you with lists of words to translate (romaji - hiragana). Writing is a great way to learn, 'cause you learn writing and recognition at the same time. Writing cemented the memory in my mind. I took about 1.5 days total, so it's not bad - just need to keep using it.


Let me know if you use it, or how you're going about it.

J



What I have learned so far is a handful of words, and I half know a few sentence structures, plus some verb endings. When I need to create a sentence in Japanese, I have to look up the structure and look up each of the words, and then plug the pieces together. It's not getting me anywhere. My teacher says if you struggle on both, you fail, if you struggle on one, you have a chance... Without vocabulary I'm going no-where.

J